page_title: Crying
section_title: Categorizing dimensions
hierarchical_section_title: Crying / Categorizing dimensions
caption_attribution_description: English: "A Frenchman sheds tears of patriotic grief as flags of his country's lost regiments are exiled to Africa", according to the caption in the 3 March 1941 issue of Life magazine. Incorrectly captioned by NARA as "A Frenchman weeps as German soldiers march into the French capital, Paris, on June 14, 1940, after the Allied armies had been driven back across France." 208-PP-10A-3. Français&#160;: Un Français pleure lors du départ de l'armée française qui quitte Marseille en 1941 pour rejoindre les colonies françaises d'Afrique pour organiser les Forces Françaises Libres. Incorrectement nommé «&#160;Un Français pleure tandis que les soldats allemands marchent dans Paris le 14 juin 1940, après que les armées alliées ont été repoussées à travers la France.&#160;» par la NARA.
context_page_description: Crying is the shedding of tears in response to an emotional state, pain or a physical irritation of the eye. Emotions that can lead to crying include anger, happiness, or sadness. The act of crying has been defined as "a complex secretomotor phenomenon characterized by the shedding of tears from the lacrimal apparatus, without any irritation of the ocular structures", instead, giving a relief which protects from conjunctivitis. A related medical term is lacrimation, which also refers to non-emotional shedding of tears. Various forms of crying are known as sobbing, weeping, wailing, whimpering, bawling, and blubbering.
  For crying to be described as sobbing, it usually has to be accompanied by a set of other symptoms, such as slow but erratic inhalation, occasional instances of breath holding and muscular tremor.
  A neuronal connection between the lacrimal gland and the areas of the human brain involved with emotion has been established. Scientists debate over whether humans are the only animals that produce tears in response to emotional states.
context_section_description: There have been many attempts to differentiate between the two distinct types of crying: positive and negative. Different perspectives have been broken down into three dimensions to examine the emotions being felt and also to grasp the contrast between the two types.
  Spatial perspective explains sad crying as reaching out to be "there", such as at home or with a person who may have just died. In contrast, joyful crying is acknowledging being "here." It emphasized the intense awareness of one's location, such as at a relative's wedding.
  Temporal perspective explains crying slightly differently. In temporal perspective, sorrowful crying is due to looking to the past with regret or to the future with dread. This illustrated crying as a result of losing someone and regretting not spending more time with them or being nervous about an upcoming event. Crying as a result of happiness would then be a response to a moment as if it is eternal; the person is frozen in a blissful, immortalized present.
  The last dimension is known as the public-private perspective. This describes the two types of crying as ways to imply details about the self as known privately or one's public identity. For example, crying due to a loss is a message to the outside world that pleads for help with coping with internal sufferings. Or, as Arthur Schopenhauer suggested, sorrowful crying is a method of self-pity or self-regard, a way one comforts oneself. Joyful crying, in contrast, is in recognition of beauty, glory, or wonderfulness.
caption: A Frenchman sheds tears of patriotic grief (1940).
exif: {}